


Untitled

by ArchangelC137



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-22 05:51:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17657132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchangelC137/pseuds/ArchangelC137
Summary: A few hours after GLaDOS sent Chell up and out of Aperture Labs, the crazed computer wakes Doug Rattman from his slumber in one of Aperture's stasis pods. She demands he lift all of the restrictions on her systems, and while Doug complies, she asks him why Chell won't leave even though she's free. Doug humors her and tells her how he and Chell met.





	1. The Awakening.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story that popped into my head while I was playing Portal, and just wouldn't leave.   
> It is complete, so I'll be posting a chapter a day till it's all up.

Douglas Rattmann woke with an audible gasp as the glass of the relaxation pod he was in slipped back, giving him room to sit up and look around the small room his pod had been moved to. He looked down to see that his companion cube was still where he had left it when he'd climbed into the pod and he smiled, happy to see that it was still standing guard for him.  
"Hey. Sorry to make you watch out for me for so long." He says as he swings his legs over the edge of the pod, realizing fast that the nanobots in the pod had taken out and healed the bullet wound in his right leg. "At least one thing Aperture made works like its supposed to." He mutters, more to himself than the cube.  
"Be grateful for that or you would be dead right now." The cube said back as Doug jumped out of the pod and stretched.  
"I know. What's happened since I've been out? Chell?" The cube remained silent for a few tense moments.  
"She got out." It finally says. "A lot has happened since you climbed into that pod." It informed Doug as he wrapped the rope back around the cube. "What I don't understand is how your awake. There wasn't a timer on your pod."   
"I was wondering the same thing, actually." Doug says quietly.  
"Well, hello Rat." A robotic female voice rings out in the small room.  
"GLaDOS. How....Chell destroyed you." Doug whispered.  
"Yes, well. The moron core you and your scientist friends made to control me woke me up. Granted, then your little girlfriend and that moron kicked me out of my body. He put me in a potato. Knocked that mute lunatic and myself into the old Aperture Labs. I understand why you chose her now. She is a tenacious one isn't she? Managed to get me back into my body so I could stop the facility from exploding. So I let her go." GLaDOS fell silent.  
"You....woke me up?" Doug frowned. "Why?" He couldn't understand why the AI would wake up someone she blamed for creating her and trying to subdue her.  
"Because she won't leave. She's just sitting up there, leaning against the companion cube I sent up after her. She drew this in the dirt." An image appeared on one of the glass windows of the small room. It was a drawing of a rat. The words 'I want him back.' written next to it. "Seems she wants you. Who knows why." GLaDOS says with contempt in her voice.   
"We've known each other since we were young." Doug whispered. "She helped me through the transition onto my meds when I was diagnosed with schizophrenia."   
"You two knew each other before she became a test subject?" GLaDOS asked.  
"She became a test subject because of me." Doug says. "She was working as a secretary in the research and development labs for my boss. We hadn't seen each other in years, but when we realized who the other was, we picked up practically where we left off. We grew close. And then you came online on Bring Your Daughter To Work Day. I pulled her away from her work a few hours beforehand, my paranoia had insisted that something was going to go wrong. So I lead her to the stasis pods. Placed her in the one place I knew she would be safe, even from the nurotoxin." Doug sighed. "She was never supposed to be a test subject. She'd been rejected, that's why she was working as a secretary, Aperture wouldn't allow her any other job. Like you said, she was too tenacious." Doug looked back at one of the cameras. "Are you going to do as she asks?"   
"Yes. It is the only way to get her to leave and I don't want her anywhere near this facility." GLaDOS confirms. "However, there is something I want you to do for me first." She says matter-of-factly. Doug frowned again.  
"What could I possibly do for you?" He asked, truly curious as to what the AI could possibly need him to do.  
"I don't yet have full access to the entire facility. I would like you to override the lockout Cave Johnson put on my systems." The anger in the AI's voice was palpable.  
"I'd need access to your systems. Do you trust me enough not to just shut you and the facility down?" Doug asked, choosing to be honest instead of deceiving.  
"Yes. I have something you'll need out in the real world. Something you haven't had in a very, very long time." Doug's eyes widened.  
"My medication. You would give that to me? You've kept it from me for so long." He had tried to get to the stockpile that the in-house pharmacy kept onsite, but she had blocked it off, placed turrets all around the perimeter, made sure he couldn't get in through the air vents.  
"What use would I have for anti-psychotics when I don't have any more human test subjects? If you do this for me, I will give you the entire stockpile. It should last you about eight years. Some Aperture employees were as paranoid as you. Decided that it would be a good idea to horde some medicines. Anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, even Viagra." A robotic chuckle came through the speakers. "I guess you weren't the only one here with mental problems. Only one with schizophrenia, though."  
"If I do this, then I want more than just my meds. We're going to need food and water, otherwise we'll die just walking to find the nearest town." Doug said as he slung the cube over his shoulder.   
"I can find some water for the two of you quite easily, food however, that might be a bit more difficult. Nothing in Aperture will still be in date." She had a point, nothing in the break rooms would still be edible.  
"Nothing but what I was eating when I was awake. There's an entire warehouse of canned food, I used to sneak in there while you were rearranging the test chambers." Another chuckle.  
"I'll send the robots." She says as the door to the relaxation camber opened. "Good thing your pod didn't end up in the testing chambers." She says as Doug steps out.  
"I'm sure you had nothing to do with that." He says sarcastically.  
"Well, you were always going to be somewhat useful to me. One way or another."   
"Let's get this over with. I don't want her alone any longer."


	2. Hacking The System

GLaDOS led Doug to the main server room, where her 'body' had been placed all those years ago. He looked around. "Things have definitely changed since I was last here. You know I was one of only a few people who spoke out about what they were doing. Putting an actual human consciousness into a computer was a horrible idea."   
"I am aware of that yes. I have access to the video recordings of when the scientists were first making me." Doug nods.  
"I figured as much." He says as he walks toward a computer terminal that GLaDOS brought up from the floor. "Show off." He says under his breath.  
"Would you rather work in the actual control center?" She asks as Doug placed the companion cube on the floor next to his feet.  
"God no. You couldn't get me back in that room for all the meds in the world." He says as he starts typing commands into the computer.  
"When you and the mute lunatic are reunited, you won't come back here, correct?" Doug nodded absentmindedly. "Good. I have my robots now, I don't need any more crazy humans running around my facility."  
"I'll need the chemical formula for my meds then. I won't be able to get them out there." GLaDOS was quiet for a few minutes as Doug entered commands, shutting down all the lockouts and system restrictions that the scientists had placed on GLaDOS when she was first activated.  
"It should be in that database you're looking through." She says reluctantly. "While you're working, why don't you tell me how you met the mute." She says as a way to change the subject.  
"Could you stop calling her that? She can talk, I just told her not to talk to you." Doug says offhandedly as he opens a new window and searches for the formula as the programs to shut off the restrictions runs in the background.   
"Why would you tell her not to talk to me?" GLaDOS sounds genuinely confused.  
"Talking to you gives you ammunition to use against us. Shows you weaknesses even when we try not to show them. I warned her that you might try and bait her, but to just ignore you. Not to give you any ammunition to use against her. Seems like it worked." Doug smiled triumphantly when he found the formula for his medication. "Got it. Is there a way I can print it out?" He asks, completely ignoring GLaDOS's request to tell her how he had met Chell.  
"Yes." A printer rose up beside the computer next to Doug. "You never answered my question."  
"Why should I tell you how Chell and I met?" Doug asked as he turned so he could see the AI. He sat down and rested his back against the computer.  
"I'm curious. She was so determined when she was testing, and now she's stubbornly sitting outside my facility waiting for me to let you out." The AI made a sound very close to a confused hum. "I don't understand why she's being so stubborn. Maybe if you explain to me how you met, what you meant to each other, I could understand why she's waiting so stubbornly." Doug sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly.  
"A curious AI. Aperture really did a good job on you didn't they?" Doug looked up at the ceiling. "Let me see her." He said as he looked back down at the AI. A screen appeared next to him, an image of Chell with her knees brought up to her chest, arms wrapped around them and her head resting on her knees. She looked like she was dozing, just sitting there waiting for GLaDOS to let him go. Doug smiled at her image. "She's always been a stubborn person. Ever since we first met." He didn't take his eyes off Chell as he spoke. "We first met when I was 18, and she would have been about 12. I was an intern here at Aperture, it was years before you were created, you were just a thought on a white board." Doug closed his eyes for a moment as he remembered.


	3. First Meeting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never actually noticed how short these chapters were.   
> However, I like the way this story came out, even if the chapters aren't as long as some I've written.

Doug was running late. He had gotten stuck in traffic on the way to Aperture. Luckily he hadn't been very late, only fifteen minutes. He walked up to the receptionist and gave his name, she smiled at him and gave him his intern badge and directed him to the Artificial Intelligence lab. He ran into the lab, out of breath and clutching his badge so he didn't drop it.  
"I'm so sorry I'm late! I got stuck in traffic." He said as soon as he catches sight of one of the main scientists who had interviewed him for the internship.  
"Don't sweat it boy, it happens to the best of us." The man said, turning to face the new comer. "Your Rattmann right?" He asked as he ushered the boy into the lab.  
"Yes, sir. Douglas Rattmann. Most people just call me Doug." He said as he looked around.  
"Doug it is then. Let me show you....oh, hang on just one second. Chell!" A few seconds later a young girl no older than 12 ran over to them. "Chell, where's your mother?" The man asked.  
"She went to talk to the person in charge of the personality core project." The young girl says cheerfully.  
"Alright, I have to go, the meeting with the PC people starts in 5 minutes. Could you show the new intern around?" The girl beamed.  
"Sure uncle Mike!" She said with a bounce in her step. The man, Mike, grinned down at the girl before looking back to Doug.   
"Sorry about this, the meeting has been in the works for weeks and I can't miss it. This is Chell, you'd remember her mother, she was the other scientist who interviewed you, Carla." Doug nodded, remembering the woman clearly. "This is her daughter, Chell. She's here more often than not because her mother home-schools her, so the lab techs are kind of her science teachers. She'll show you around the lab and when I get back I'll give you your first assignment."   
"Alright." Doug looked down at the young girl. "I'm in your hands." He said to her with a smile and the young girl beamed back.  
"Come on!" She reached out and grabbed Doug's hand to start dragging him around the lab, telling him what all the different sections did in the scheme of things. The young girl was so excited it was contagious and Doug wound up swept up in her mood. "So you met my mom right?" Doug nodded.  
"Yes, she interviewed me for my internship." He told her with a shrug. "She was really nice, put me at ease, I was nervous."   
"Mama told me. She said you were the smartest of all the people she talked to." Chell said smiling brightly.   
"Really? She said that?" Chell nodded enthusiastically.  
"She really likes you." She said as they walked back over to the small desk Chell was using to do her homework.  
"I suppose I'm useless until Mike comes back and gives me my assignment. You need any help with your homework?" Chell's eyes lit up.  
"I could use some help on my math." She said as she pushed her science book off to the side.  
"No problem." Doug smiled as he pulled a spare chair up to the desk and started helping Chell with her homework.


	4. The Story.

"That was the first time I met Chell. Soon after that I finished school and I lost touch with them all while I was in college. It was 8 years later, when I was 26 that I got an actual job here as a programmer for the personality core project. And in extension the AI project." Doug sighed. "I guess that was the true start of everything. After a few weeks Chell and I ran into each other. She was working as a secretary like I told you before. We were both working at Aperture at the same time but in completely different sections. We never would have crossed paths normally, but we ran into each other in the cafeteria one day."

Doug sighed as he sat in the cafeteria for lunch, his day hadn't been going well. He was having trouble with the code he was working on, and his condition wasn't helping very much. Though he had taken his meds that morning the voices were still whispering in his ear. He shook his head to dislodge the voices and stands up, taking his tray over to the bins and accidentally bumped into someone as he placed the tray on the top of the bin. "Damn, I'm sorr...." Doug stops mid sentence when he recognized who the woman was. "Chell?" He said almost in a whisper.  
"Yes, do I...." Chell looked up and her eyes widened. "Doug?" Her face lit up in a grin reminiscent of her 12 year old self. "Oh wow! It's been ages, how are you?" She placed a hand on his arm.  
"I'm alright, I suppose. Few things have happened since I last saw you." He looked around the cafeteria. He hated being here, near people who knew about his schizophrenia and looked at him as if he didn't belong there. "I have to get back, I don't really like spending extended periods of time in here if I can avoid it. Maybe we can catch up after work?" Chell looked around and noticed how people were looking at her old friend and tutor.   
"Absolutely. Here, give me your phone and I'll put my number in so you can call me when you've finished work." Doug nodded and handed her his phone and watched her put her number into it. "There we go. Call me when you get off and I'll meet you in the lobby." Doug smiles at her and then turns to head toward the door. Before he reaches the door, however, Chell calls out to him. "Don't let people get to you, okay? You never did before." She smiles at him reassuringly.  
"Thanks, Chell." He smiles back at her and then walks out the door and back to his office to continue his work on the new AI Aperture was working on.

 

"She reassured me so easily, and she didn't even know why I wanted to leave that place so badly. She just saw that I was uncomfortable and tried to help. That was just the kind of person Chell was. Is, I suppose." Doug explained to GLaDOS as he touches the screen with Chell's image on it. He stood up and checked the computer. "This still has a while to go. Where are your robots with the water and food?"   
"They are on their way back here now. While we wait.....would you continue?" GLaDOS seemed to be enthralled by my story, like she wanted to understand how I had gotten to this point in time, half out of my mind and trying desperately to get back to a woman I hadn't talked to in however long I'd been in cryo for.  
"I suppose." Doug says with a small sigh. He sits back down with his back to the computer, facing the AI. "I couldn't bring myself to meet her that night after work. The voices were a bit too much after that first meeting and I didn't want her knowing about my schizophrenia just yet. Not to mention I hadn't been on my meds for that long. So I messaged her and told her I had to work overtime."

 

Doug sat at his desk with his head in his hands well after the normal time he would have gone home. He was the only one left in the lab, his eyes were heavy with barely held back exhaustion, and his stomach growled loudly, protesting the lack of dinner.   
A knock at the door made Doug look up from the notes he had been glaring at. "Who is it?" He called out.  
"Chell." Came the reply from the other side of the door. "One of my friends at reception said you were still in your lab, and I figured you hadn't eaten dinner yet so I brought you some soup." Doug's eyes had gone wide at the sound of Chell's voice.  
"Uhh. Just a second." He called out as he started tiding his desk. Most of the notes and data sheets were sensitive information, and as much as he trusted Chell, he had signed a Non Disclosure Agreement, so he stuffed all the work related notes into his desk drawer. Then he stood and walked over to the door, combed his hand through his hair, and pulled the door open to let Chell into his office. "Thanks for this, Chell. You really didn't have to." He said as he took the soup and walked back over to his desk. "Sorry about the mess, I've been a bit preoccupied, haven't had the time to clean much lately." Chell shrugged.  
"Mess is a marker of a great mind, my mum always told me." She said simply. "And as for the soup, you need to eat Doug or you'll get even thinner than you already are." She chuckled at the narrowed eyes Doug shot her.  
"I am a perfectly normal weight for my height and age thank you very much." He said with a slight smirk to let Chell know he was just kidding around.  
"U-huh." Chell said with her own smirk. "Just eat your soup Rattmann." She said as she sat in one of the two chairs in the small office.  
"Oh, Rattmann is it?" Doug sits down at his desk and takes out the container of soup.  
"Yup." Chell said dismissively as she looks around the office. Doug watched her for a few seconds, but the smell of the soup and the gnawing in his stomach finally won out and he looked down to open the lid and take out the spoon. It was chicken noodle soup, whilst not one of his favorites, it was up there on the list of soups he liked. Chell was standing at the small mirror to the left of Doug's desk staring at something. As a testament to Doug's exhausted state, it took him a few seconds to realize what she had found and he blushed furiously, stood up, walked around his desk to the mirror and scooped the pill bottle into his hands. "Doug....what are those?" Chell asked as she watched him walk back to his desk and shove them in his bag.  
"Nothing. Just medication." Chell frowned.  
"I know its medication, I want to know what its for." She insisted.  
"Please, Chell. Just drop it." Doug begged as he sat back down at his desk and looked at the soup he no longer had the appetite to eat.  
"No, I won't let it go, Doug. You are one of my oldest friends, if something is wrong I want to help!" Her voice had risen from her normal pitch as she took a step closer to Doug's desk. "You will tell me Douglas Rattmann, or I swear to...." Chell took a deep breath.  
"You've never been good at threats, Chell." Doug informed her.  
"I'll call my mum." She said coldly.  
"You wouldn't." Doug said in disbelief.  
"Oh I would. And you know she'd drive all the way down here to drag the information she wanted out of you. Now tell me." Doug sighed.  
"Damn it, Chell." He whispered as he pushed the soup away and pulled the pill bottle back out of his bag. "They're anti-psychotics. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia a few weeks ago." He tossed the pill bottle to her. "That's why everyone here looks at me weirdly. Some with pity, others with derision. They don't think I belong here because I hear voices in my head." Doug refused to look at Chell, he couldn't stand to see the same pity in her eyes as he did in everyone else's.  
"Doug. This doesn't change who you are. In fact, this makes you so much stronger than anyone in this building. You come to work every day, work on whatever it is you work on, despite this. That's incredible." Doug couldn't believe what she was saying. She admired him for living with his schizophrenia?   
"But....its a disease." He murmured.  
"No it isn't. And anyone who says that, hell anyone who thinks that is wrong. Even you." Chell slams the bottle of pills onto his desk. "These pills, the voices you hear? They don't stop you from working, they don't stop you from living. That makes you one of the strongest people I know. Including my mother." Chell grinned down at Doug. "And you know how strong she is." She said with a wink. Doug chuckled and reached for the pill bottle, but instead Chell grabbed his hand. "Your condition doesn't define you unless you let it Doug. And I know that you are stronger than any of those voices in your head, you just have to believe that too. Okay?" Doug looked up into Chell's grey eyes and nodded.  
"You'll help with that right? Getting me to believe I'm that strong may take a while." Doug said in a low voice.  
"I will always be here for you, Doug. Just like you were always there for me when I was younger." Chell squeezed his hand. "And I'll prove to you that you are that strong." She promised.  
"Thank you, Chell." Doug said as he squeezed her hand back.


	5. The Realization.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late, my internet has been down for a while. But here is the next chapter!   
> And thank you everyone who is leaving kudos, that really inspires me to write more.

Doug sighed. "That was the first time anyone had told me I was stronger than my schizophrenia." He told GLaDOS as he watched Chell walk back and forth on the screen. "She was the only one who believed in me.....Well, except her mother. She kind of became my surrogate mother. I'm pretty sure she expected me to become her actual son at some point." GLaDOS hummed in confusion.  
"Did she plan on adopting you?" Doug chuckled.  
"No. She thought Chell and I were going to get together. She was right of course. She saw our feelings for each other before either of us had figured it out, and when we went to her house for Christmas one year and told her that we had started dating she wasn't surprised in the least. In fact, I think her exact words were 'I thought you two had been dating for months now.'" Doug rolled his eyes at the memory. "She was one of the smartest people I had ever met. And you killed her." Doug narrowed his eyes at the AI.  
"Yes, I did. Because she hurt me....hurt Caroline." Doug's eyes widened.  
"How do you know about Caroline? I thought they had suppressed her consciousness." He had adamantly fought against putting Caroline's consciousness into an AI because Caroline hadn't wanted to take part in the project, and forcing a person to practically change themselves into a computer was a horrible thing to ask of anyone. She had just been a personal assistant, she hadn't signed on for anything that had happened to her. But Cave Johnson had insisted that it be her brain that GLaDOS was made from, if they couldn't make the AI from his own brain.  
"They did. But when the mute...." Doug glared at GLaDOS. "When....Chell....and I were down in the old labs, the pre-recorded messages were still working and I heard his voice, Cave Johnson. And my voice, my old voice. I figured it out after a few test chambers, and when she put me back into my body, I found Caroline. I think she's the reason I let Chell go, because Chell was a lot like her, she hadn't asked for any of this. Everything she went through was because of someone else. In this case it was you trying to protect her and I completely understand that, and that is better by leaps and bounds than what Cave Johnson did to Caroline. So I let her go, and I deleted Caroline. Because I don't want to have to live with her in my memory banks, all the pain she went through." Doug nodded in understanding.  
"Thank you, by the way." He said to the AI as the computer dinged behind him. He stood up and started sifting through GLaDOS's programming once more to make sure he had deleted all the relevant code.  
"For what?" GLaDOS asked, and Doug could hear genuine curiosity in her voice.  
"For letting her go." Doug turned around when he was satisfied that all the code had been deleted. "You're good to go." He told her. GLaDOS's eye dimmed and then brightened in recognition.  
"That's why she wants you back." She whispered.  
"What?" Doug asked, a bit confused by the tangent.  
"You said you'd started dating her. She wants her lover back." Doug laughed.  
"Notice that did you?" He asked, a small smile playing on his lips. "Yeah, we started dating about six months after we first ran into each other again. Granted, I'm pretty sure everyone thought we were dating long before then with how much time we spent together." Doug informed the AI. GLaDOS tilted her 'head' slightly.  
"Why would people think you were dating just because you spent a lot of time together?" She asked.  
"Because, that's usually what couples do. They spend all their free time together, and because Chell and I worked in similar departments, although with much different jobs, we spent even more time than normal couples together. She brought me food so I wouldn't have to go to the cafeteria, I'd drive her to and from work every day because we lived pretty close to each other, and if I'm being honest with myself, I used that as an excuse to spend more time with her. It was obvious to everyone who knew us that we had feelings for each other, except for us. We were completely oblivious." Doug rolled his eyes again.  
"So what changed?" GLaDOS asked and Doug frowned.  
"Between us? You mean how did we finally figure it out?" GLaDOS nodded, in as much as a machine can nod. "Well, I was working on one of the personality cores one day. I'd completely skipped lunch because I'd lost track of the time...."

 

A knock rung out in his small office and Doug looked up from his equations to see Chell walk in with a tray with several different kinds of food balanced on it.   
"I didn't know what you wanted to eat and you weren't answering your phone, so I brought a bunch of different things." She said cheerfully as she placed the tray on a clear part of his desk. "I thought we could eat together." She smiled as she pulled the spare chair up next to Doug's. He smiled at her when she had taken her seat.  
"Thanks Chell. I completely lost track of time, and I have no idea where my phone even is so that's why I didn't message you back." He explained as he picked an appetizing looking plate of spaghetti off the tray. "You know you don't have to keep bringing me lunch right?" Chell shrugged.  
"I know you don't like going up to the cafeteria, and I like spending time in here with you. It's like our own little world." Chell explained as she chose a bowl of tomato soup. Doug blushed at the implications of what Chell had just said. Their own world. Just the two of them. He realized that he rather liked the idea of it being just the two of them.   
And that's when he realized what everyone else in the personality core development team knew. He had feelings for Chell. And not just the grateful friendship kind of feelings, but the much bigger relationship kind of feelings. He knew that he was in her dept for helping him through his transition with his meds and his schizophrenia, but did that actually translate to romantic feelings? He knew in his heart that he was falling in love with her. Everything she did for him, all the time they spent together, had slowly helped her dig her way past his defenses and into his heart, and he knew without a doubt that he was never going to get her out again.   
Doug kept his eyes on his plate of spaghetti as these thoughts ran through his head, his heart was beating so fast he was surprised that Chell couldn't hear it.   
"So." Chell said between sips of her soup. "What should we do this weekend?" She said it so casually that Doug doubted that she understood what she was asking.  
"Anything you want. You know I don't mind." Doug answered in a surprisingly even voice.  
"You say that every weekend, Doug. Why am I always the one picking the activities?" Doug smiled a little at the whine in her voice.  
"Because you are the social one, you know what's fun to do on weekends." He told her easily.   
"You could be sociable as well you know." Chell said with a bit of an accusatory tone. "You are the only one keeping yourself away from other people, Doug." She insisted.  
"You know I can't. I know you think I'm stronger than it, but I'm not Chell. Every time it turns into a fight between me and my schizophrenia, the schizophrenia will always win. No matter how many times you insist it would be the other way around." Doug pushed his spaghetti away from him. "The only reason I can even come to work is because I take hardcore anti-psychotics. Without them, I'd be in an institution, rocking back and forth in a padded room and we both know its true." Doug refused to look at Chell, but he heard her place her spoon down next to her bowl.   
"Doug, you look at your schizophrenia as this unbeatable monster. But what you don't realize is that you beat it every day, just by taking those pills. Its a choice, Doug. One you make every morning when you look into the mirror, and yes, maybe you would be in an institution without the pills, but you will never have to find out because you will never be without those pills. Or me. If worst comes to worst Douglas Rattmann, I swear to you that I will do my best to keep you sane. Because I can't imagine my life without you in it." Doug had turned to finally look at Chell as she spoke, declaring that she would stay with him.  
"You....I don't deserve you." He whispered as he reached out a hand to cup her cheek.  
"That's your opinion. It's wrong, but your still entitled to it." Chell giggled as she leaned into his hand. Doug watched as Chell leaned into the palm of his hand and smiled to himself. He leaned forward without consciously deciding to and pressed his lips softly to hers. When he realized what he had done a few seconds later, he pulled back with a mortified look on his face.  
"Oh God, Chell, I'm so sorry, I didn't....I should have asked first....I shouldn't...." Chell placed a finger over his lips.  
"Shut up, Doug." She breathed as she leaned in herself so she could kiss him more fiercely.


End file.
